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Elon Musk Predicts Automation Will Lead To A Universal Basic Income (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Mashable's new article about Tesla/SpaceX founder Elon Musk:
Tech innovators in the self-driving car and AI industries talk a lot about how many human jobs will be innovated out of existence, but they rarely explain what will happen to all those newly jobless humans. In an interview with CNBC on Friday, Musk said that he believes the solution to taking care of human workers who are displaced by robots and software is creating a (presumably government-backed) universal basic income for all. "There's a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," said Musk. "I'm not sure what else one would do. That's what I think would happen."
And what will this world look like? "People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," Musk told CNBC's interviewer. "Certainly more leisure time." President Obama has also talked about "redesigning the social compact" with MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, and in August predicted the question of whether there's support for the Universal Basic Income is "a debate that we'll be having over the next 10 or 20 years."
And what will this world look like? "People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," Musk told CNBC's interviewer. "Certainly more leisure time." President Obama has also talked about "redesigning the social compact" with MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito, and in August predicted the question of whether there's support for the Universal Basic Income is "a debate that we'll be having over the next 10 or 20 years."
From the 1930s Keynes predicted a 15 hour working week. In the 60s and 70s a three day weekend was predicted. What actually happens is that some people have to work harder than ever for fear of losing their jobs while others have no work and live in poverty.
The test is whether Musk would be willing to pay a significantly higher corporation tax to fund the basic income.
I am glad someone said this. I first read it in Houellebecq's Whatever, and was shocked by how flagrantly true it is. Most of what we do now is shuffling the desk chairs on the Titanic, hoping people will keep the money machine going.
A slightly more nuanced view: whatever everyone has becomes mediocre, partially from our pretense and partially because the wider the appeal of any given thing, the less quality is invested in it. People are working to rise above the Herd because the Herd converts everything it touches into mediocre variants of the original.
Alternative Right.
..."People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things,"...
Really? Go ask those living under the current welfare state how "complex" and "interesting" their lives are based on a government-funded paycheck.
UBI will be nothing more than the current welfare program expanded. And if you think for a second any government will financially approve any more than BASIC bread-and-cheese income, you're delusional. This cannot and will not happen without a massive overhaul of unadulterated greed that has created the 1% elite class who care about themselves, not funding millions of humans to enjoy an "interesting" life sitting on their ass no matter how much self-education and groupthink may advance the human race. Greed always wins. Look at history.
At first, there may be some kind of pay scale to reward those with advanced degrees and careers (lawyers, doctors, etc.) as they're put out to pasture by automation. But once we realize that automation and AI have made educating a human an extinct concept, all humans will be pretty much treated the same way financially, for there will literally be no valid reason to reward one above the other.
Forget defeating unadulterated greed for a moment, an equally delusional concept is thinking that governments can afford to pay humans to have a complex and interesting life. Much like trying to extract taxes out of the wealthy, lobbyists and loopholes serving the elite class will ensure they take on the smallest burden possible, which translates to minimal funding for the UBI concept.
TL; DR - Either figure out another way to pay for it, or call a spade a spade, and drop the delusional dreamspeak.
cheaper then jail / prison that some use for there needs at a much higher cost.
$31,286 or more per inmate vs just giving people UBI
Well we certainly won't have to worry about it in the U.S. We can't even get universal basic healthcare, much less a universal basic income.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
People keep saying something like this whenever the government talks about raising minimum wage, and although it is true that costs do go up somewhat, the net long term effects on society as a whole have historically always been an increase in the standard of living for those on the lowest rungs of the earnings ladder. Why would a UBI be any different?
Because a scary amount of people in this country take a shattered economic theory as gospel. No amount of evidence that it is wrong- to the point in many instances of reality being a diametric opposite of its predictions- will ever convince these people, because they were raised believing it, and few people ever throw the yoke of the beliefs they were indoctrinated with as children. Cognitive dissonance is real, and it is strong.
Society is evolving, not collapsing. In better parts of the world life has never been so good.
Your mistake is in conflating "human effort" with "Income."
History is replete with individuals who did valuable, and/or worthy, and/or artistic, things because that was what they wanted to do, and not because someone was paying them (and in many cases, no one was paying them.)
I write SDR software. It's pretty good -- in fact, a lot of my users say it's the best in the world. Guess what I get paid for doing that? Nothing. Zip. Nada. I do it because I like doing it. And, of course, because I can do it. In my case, it's because I've done some other things that got me the financial wherewithal to do what I want, instead of what I had to. But I assure you, if I'd been able to do my own thing sooner, I would have done so.
Frankly, if the only thing motivating someone to do something is money, they could be doing something better. Also, there is a distinct possibility that the job isn't being done as well as it could be.
We should get away -- entirely -- from the idea that human worth is tied to constant wage slavery.
Here's something else;
Used to be we swept the floor. Someone had to do it, right? Then along came the vacuum cleaner, some time was saved, and the brooms got put away. Then along came Roomba, almost the entire tasl now requires no attention, and the vacuum cleaner got put away. What was lost? Not a damn thing. What was gained? The freedom to do do whatever you wanted while your floor got vacuumed. All that's left is emptying the Roomba's collected grit and grime; and how long do you suppose it'll be before the hardware doing the job can do that too? And again, what is lost? Nothing.
Labor-saving devices most critical value is that of relieving us of drudgery. Not that of freeing us to do other drudgery.
That's what everyone has to wrap their head around.
If I don't have to drive, mostly, I won't. If I don't have to vacuum the floor, I won't (and I do, in fact, own and appreciate a Roomba. I clean it once a day, takes about thirty seconds.) If I don't have to clean the catbox, I won't. Go shopping. Take out the garbage. Wash my clothes. Mow the lawn. And so on. And yes, that absolutely includes working for a wage -- when machines can do it, they should do it. It's not a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing.
We're a long way from this, but it is exactly where we should be trying to head. Money isn't a good thing. Money is what is holding our society in its current, stressed, divisively classed form.
It's going be very rough getting from here to there. I can't say I feel very good about watching the process, but the game is very much worth the candle. Let's not hang on to drudgery. Let's reach for freedom to do whatever we want.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.